A true story of a First Time Home Buyer.

by Joe Somebody
on Thursday, March 10, 2011

Great, just great. My house may kill me. Facepalm. So I really hate my popcorn ceilings. They are an eyesore. Some people dont even notice. Every time I look up its like im being mocked. Well its no longer as simple as I thought it would be when I go to scrape it down. Apparently between 1970 to 1978, popcorn ceiling material contained asbestos. In 1978 it became illegal but it was still legal to install it. Installation of asbestos ceiling texture was not banned because of the financial loss it would have meant for manufacturers, suppliers and contractors who had already purchased stocks of the product. Asbestos ceiling texture was still being installed in homes until the 1980s when those product stocks finally ran out.

Well my home was built in 1973. Guess what my popcorn ceiling is made of? I dont really know the correct answer to that but I will find out before I scrape anything.

Im slowly becoming a mesothelioma expert. Mesothelioma information is abundent on the web. I can find all kinds of Asbestos related cancer research. This stuff is no joke. Its a rare form of cancer but it is lethal. The biggest problem is that you get cancer decads later. Most notably lung cancer. You breath in microscopic asbestos particles and they lay dorment in your lungs. You body fights them for years but it can never get rid of them. So eventually the toxins from it causes mesothelioma.

So I will have to have asbestos exposure testing done in my house. They will test all the rooms and send of peices of the popcorn ceiling to a lab. After they do all their testing I will find out what I need to do. I really want it to come back negative. The little research I have done shows that it will cost a small fortune for a specialist to come out and remove the asbestos from my ceilings. I dont want to have this happe. I would much rather do it, which I will only do if the test come back negative. I dont want to risk having cancer from trying to save a couple bucks.

There currently is no cure for Mesothelioma. Thats a big sign that you dont want to mess with asbestos. It will kill you in the long run.

Any and all testing you have done. Make sure that the lab is certified and if it comes back positive, be sure to use a certified asbestos abatement contractor. This will make sure that proper care is taken during removal.

I dont want to get lung cancer. I need to take these steps so nothing happens.

Damn, that just sounds terrible. Personally popcorn ceilings don't bother me, I can see how they would be annoying and hard to clean though. If it were full of asbestos, I'd want it gone regardless. Ugh, hope its negative!